Monday, February 15, 2010

Tony Fernandes and Paul Fletcher... great minds think alike!

I read Tony Fernanades interview in Autosport today.
In it he states that his F1 project is receiving funding from Proton car company...Q. Proton is putting money into the project now?TF: Yes they are. And obviously they will have some technological spin-offs and hopefully they can use our platform to show the world... obviously they have had some maybe not so positive experiences on some television programmes, and I think they could possibly use being in F1 to show they make world class cars as well. So it's a technological collaboration, there is money behind it as well, but the main drive will be to improve Lotus.

Wow!

He goes on to say...

Q. This team obviously grew out of the Litespeed Formula 3 team that was considering building it's own chassis. Could we see a Lotus F3 chassis in the coming years?

TF: We had two or three developmental teams and it shows again our seriousness about this that we had put money behind Fairuz in the Renault series and we will assist Litespeed as well. Both of those teams will be development teams for us...
We have put a substantial budget behind that because it is very important to not only develop future drivers but to develop engineers and know-how, and commercial-world know-how in running a Formula 1 team.

I would like to say that this mirrors the opinion of Paul Fletcher MBE Founder and Managing Partner StadiArena. Paul and Tony think alike... Smart Guys!

"We want to open a football university — the first ever in this country. There are plenty of places where you can study football itself but nowhere where you can learn about the financial, commercial and social aspects of the game, from advertising and pitch technology to the business side.

(Please read my previous entry)

He (Tony) finishes this answer by saying...

My experience at Air Asia, one of the first things I did when we made some money, was to build an academy and we trained our own pilots and engineers etc and we invested a lot of money. When I looked at West Ham the thing I liked about them most was the academy. So we are putting a lot of effort into the development side of the team.

Driver development for Lotus F1 is under Alex Yoong. Proton Head of Racing is Tengku Djan. They have both worked for A1 Team Malaysia. Djan has raced for Proton and Petronas, and is currently involved in 'Drifting'.

My advice is read my proposal. Talk to Petronas about the synergies between your wants and needs and theirs.
I don't think Paul or Tony are stupid!
Below is a slideshare version of my proposal.